API Definitions Organizations

These are the organizations I come across in my research who are doing interesting things in the API space. They could be companies, institutions, government agencies, or any other type of organizational entity. My goal is to aggregate so I can stay in tune with what they are up to and how it impacts the API space.

Apache Avro is a data serialization system. Avro relies on schemas. When Avro data is read, the schema used when writing it is always present. This permits each datum to be written with no per-value overheads, making serialization both fast and small. This also facilitates use with dynamic, scripting languages, since data, together with its schema, is fully self-describing.

API Blueprint is a documentation-oriented API description language. A couple of semantic assumptions over the plain Markdown. API Blueprint is perfect for designing your Web API and its comprehensive documentation but also for quick prototyping and collaboration. It is easy to learn and even easier to read – after all it is just a form of plain text.

Elastic Path builds commerce software that powers the next generation of digital experiences, helping businesses generate more revenue from their goods, services, and content. Our products, including Commerce Engine, Cortex, and Subscriptions, enable companies to unite discovery, buying, and consumption into outstanding customer experiences that drive more engagement and conversion.

Data Packages are a lightweight containerization format for data. They provide the foundation for frictionless data transport. Tools and integrations to make it easy to integrate Data Packages into your data processing and publishing workflows. Learn how to get started using and developing with Data Packages through our guides, tutorials and documentation.

Postman on Chrome is the most efficient way to test, develop and document APIs. Create complex requests, go back in time and view results in a beautiful way. Postman has more than 80 features to help you at every step. Our user base is growing rapidly and with more tools in the pipeline, Postman aims to provide the most comprehensive API development and testing solution to developers.

You can use the Google API Discovery Service to build client libraries, IDE plugins, and other tools that interact with Google APIs. It provides a lightweight, JSON-based API that exposes machine-readable metadata about Google APIs.

OData (Open Data Protocol) is an OASIS standard that defines the best practice for building and consuming RESTful APIs. OData helps you focus on your business logic while building RESTful APIs without having to worry about the approaches to define request and response headers, status codes, HTTP methods, URL conventions, media types, payload formats and query options etc.

The Open API Initiative (OAI) was created by a consortium of forward-looking industry experts who recognize the immense value of standardizing on how REST APIs are described. As an open governance structure under the Linux Foundation, the OAI is focused on creating, evolving and promoting a vendor neutral description format. SmartBear Software is donating the Swagger Specification directly to the OAI as the basis of this Open Specification.

RESTful API Modeling Language (RAML) is a simple and succinct way of describing practically-RESTful APIs. It encourages reuse, enables discovery and pattern-sharing, and aims for merit-based emergence of best practices. The goal is to help our current API ecosystem by solving immediate problems and then encourage ever-better API patterns. RAML is built on broadly-used standards such as YAML and JSON and is a non-proprietary, vendor-neutral open spec.

Semantic descriptions for hypermedia APIs. RESTdesc allows you to capture the functionality of hypermedia APIs, so automated agents can use them. Despite their powerful capabilities, RESTdesc descriptions are easy to master. Description is not a goal in itself: you want your API to be used. See how RESTdesc opens up your API for discovery, based on its functional characteristics.

Schema.org is a collaborative, community activity with a mission to create, maintain, and promote schemas for structured data on the Internet, on web pages, in email messages, and beyond. Schema.org vocabulary can be used with many different encodings, including RDFa, Microdata and JSON-LD.

The U.S. Data Federation supports data interoperability and harmonization across Federal, state, and local government agencies by highlighting common data formats, API specifications, and metadata vocabularies.

If you think there is an organization I should have listed here feel free to tweet it at me, or submit as a Github issue. Even though I do this full time, I'm still a one person show, and I miss quite a bit, and depend on my network to help me know what is going on.